Interest in physical wellbeing, research and interest in holistic concepts of treating disease and injury, and patient's increasing reluctance to undergo invasive surgical procedures have led to appreciation of the value of chiropractic and other holistic disciplines for the treatment of the human body. For treatment of spinal injury and for those wishing to maintain general health, particularly good condition of the spine and tone of the contiguous soft tissue structures, it may be advantageous to manipulate the spine to achieve better alignment of its component parts. Typically, this manipulation has been done, or is done, manually by a physical therapist or a doctor of chiropractic.
New diagnostic and treatment concepts have come into being as interest in and knowledge about chiropractic has increased. Treatments, such as flexion/distraction techniques, that normalize the biomechanics of the intervertebral disks and vertebral segments of the spine are one such area in which advances have occurred. The therapist or doctor traditionally has done all of the therapeutic manipulations, resulting in an inefficient use of treatment resources because some of the routine treatments could be done by machines. Some machines and devices are in use and improve the reproducability of manipulative treatment. An unmet need is to provide for the convenient, even controlled change in degree of machine manipulation, allowing for gentle or aggressive treatment as well as a progression therebetween while treatment is underway.
With particular regard to the desirability of easily controllable, variable machine manipulation of the spine, a device that would provide reproducable circumduction that can be increased or decreased safely, gradually and automatically while the device is in use would permit a treatment to start at one level of intensity and be increased or decreased to another level easily and automatically by a therapist or a therapist's assistant thereby enhancing a patient's comfort and the benefits of the treatment.
Therefore, it would be very advantageous for doctors of chiropractic and other therapists to have at their disposal a device which can provide automatic therapeutic manipulation, including circumductive motion of the spine, that could be readily adjusted or reset for the degree of manipulation, the speed of manipulation, and patient size, even while the device or machine is being used.